


uneasy lies the head that wears the (jagged) crown

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Skyrim Fusion, Billy Hargrove is Grumpy, Billy and Jonathan are Bros, Billy both Loves and Hates it, Eleven really gets the short end of the stick in this story sorry bout that, Hopper Loves El So Much, Joyce Byers is a Clever Girl, M/M, Robin came here to be Attacked, Steve Harrington is a Bisexual Agent of Pure Chaos, Steve is a Huge Flirt, and she's having a Great Time right now, dunno how that happened actually, have i mentioned that Billy is Grumpy?, i'm weepy, it's a whole thing, your daily reminder that this author loves Jonathan Byers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: "This is all the fault of that hulking mountain troll."Can I interest you in a high fantasy adventure featuring Steve seducing Billy at knifepoint, Robin being fabulous in every way, and Jim Hopper's eternal and unbreakable love for his psychic daughter?
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Jonathan Byers & Billy Hargrove, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington
Comments: 15
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I would say that I'm back on my bullshit, but that falsely implies I've ever been Off my bullshit. I'm a woman of simple needs: I needed Billy Hargrove and Jim Hopper wearing full armor, and I needed Robin and Steve to be Literal Partners in Crime. The rest is just me fucking around!
> 
> Some forward notes, in case you come to this not knowing much about The Elder Scrolls. This is very much a high fantasy setting, so if that doesn’t sound awesome…this story may not be for you? IDK it’s your life, man.  
> But I’m warning you now that I won’t be holding your hand on the lore here. Over 20 million copies of Skyrim have been sold and a lot can be figured out from context clues. We won’t be getting into the nitty gritty, like the history of Tamriel, but basic things like “what’s a Jarl?” “Where is Solitude?” and “what are Nords and Bretons?” are not questions I’ll be taking the time to explain.  
> If those are things you don’t already know, you have Google and I’m writing this for free (uesp.net is also a really helpful resource if you, like me, are a nerd and absolutely must know more).

Sundas, 8th of Sun’s Dusk, 4th Era Year 202

(Present Day)

The Blue Palace, City of Solitude, Skyrim Province

Max watched Billy doing the final inspections, handing out the various assignments to the guardsmen for the day.

All week, the palace household had been in a frenzy, from the castle steward to the junior laundresses. Though it was probably not just the palace – she hadn’t been farther than the marketplace in a month, but Max was willing to bet that the province, from the Rift to the Reach, was in a lather.

Today was the arrival of Skyrim’s new High Queen, Elivette of Laeloria. Not only was Lady Elivette not born of Skyrim, she had not a drop of Nord blood in her, and she held the title of ‘lady’, but owned no land to go with that title.

And she was twelve years old.

An entire province of the Empire had been conquered by a single man in less than a day and now their ruler was a twelve-year-old foreigner with a noble title but no land to her name and no connection to Skyrim whatsoever – except that her vassal, the man who took the throne in her name, was himself a Nord.

Irritated, Billy waited until the untrusted ears of the guards had left before he muttered “This is all the fault of that hulking mountain troll.”

“Hopper can’t be blamed for Elisif’s incompetence,” Jonathan argued, without even looking up from the volume he was reading beside the fire.

Nancy finished her row of stitches in Maxine’s dress before speaking. “You can’t blame James the Sea-Hopper,” she said, pulling the needle through the fabric with a last firm tug. “Elisif was a weak ruler, and Ulfric was too blinded by his ambitions to realize how badly he was crippling the kingdom with this war.”

“Isn’t that treason?” Dustin asked, and the four of them turned to see the four young boys – the only other children but Max in the palace who would be their new High Queen’s age.

Billy sneered. “It was treason six weeks ago. Now it’s just stating a fact.”

Mikkel – _Mike_ – Nancy’s brother, wrinkled his overlarge nose. “What’s the difference?”

“Politics,” Nancy said with a sniff, and Jonathan hastily added, “But that doesn’t mean any of you need to go around repeating it.”

Probably good advice – there were multiple members of the nobility who would much prefer to have Elisif the Fair back in power. Many of them had enjoyed the benefits of the somewhat hapless High Queen’s less than capable ruling abilities. While the adults were sure Elisif had _meant_ well, militarily she’d been almost completely under the thumb of General Tullius and diplomatically, she’d been dragged around by whichever of her late husband’s Thanes had managed to make the best appeal to her.

Naturally those Thanes were the vassals of Elisif and the late Torygg, so dismissing them from their service had been one of Hopper’s first real political moves. He couldn’t have his newly installed (and very controversial) queen’s most prestigious vassals be men and women loyal to the previous rulers.

Billy snorted, with his usual bad humor. “Elisif gets to be banished to a fine hall someplace where she’ll be out of the way – it’s us who’ll have to suffer through the tantrums and whims of a twelve year old girl.”

“Hey!” Max snapped, offended on behalf of all twelve-year-old girls.

She could see Jonathan suppressing a smile, even from across the room. “But not you, Max. You’d make a terrific High Queen.”

Nancy set her needlework back into her lap and smiled at her. “High Queen Maxine. That has quite a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Billy smirked. “They’d be calling her Maxine the Mad by the end of the first year.”

Will wandered over to his brother and Jonathan finally put his book down. Quietly, he asked “What do you think of the new queen?”

Jonathan looked up at the high stone ceilings in the study, smudged all over with soot. “I think…that I feel quite sorry for young Elivette.”

“Why?” Lucas said dubiously. “She gets to be the queen of her own country and she didn’t even have to do anything to get it.”

“Elivette isn’t anything but a figurehead, Lucas,” Nancy said softly. “She’ll agree to whatever Hopper tells her to do because she’s twelve years old and doesn’t know how to run a household, never mind an entire kingdom. She’s also a perfect stranger to the whole province – the customs and people of Skyrim are totally foreign to her. She won’t know anyone except the people who’ve sailed with her from Northpoint.”

“Some of them may even go back home to High Rock when they’re satisfied that Elivette has been settled into her position,” Jonathan added. “Since I doubt an entire retinue of Bretons will agree to uproot themselves and their families to serve a little girl in another province, High Queen or not. She may be very excited to sit upon the throne, but it’s more likely that she’s terrified. It’s possible that she doesn’t even want to be here.”

Billy’s attention was focused out one of the palace windows, overlooking the Sea of Ghosts. On the horizon, he could make out a series of blue sails. Undoubtedly the ship carrying their new queen into port.

“There’s something…that I don’t like about any of this,” he said slowly. “Hopper is a clever man, but this has all been too well orchestrated. Skyrim was felled in less than a day with Elisif, Tullius, and Ulfric distracted. But why _Elivette_? Hopper has more of a claim to this title than a backwater nobleman’s orphaned daughter – at the very least, he is a Nord born of Skyrim, one who faithfully served his late Jarl. So _why_ has he insisted that Elivette of Laeloria be made queen?”

Nervously, Jonathan eyed the children around them. “Willem, I’m not sure you should be talking about this right now.”

Max scoffed and put her nose in the air. “Billy tells me all sorts of secrets and I’ve never repeated any of them!”

With faint amusement, Billy had on his usual half-sneer as he pointed out “Except that you’ve just told them you know all sorts of secrets, Maxine.”

She turned red. “Oh!”

He eyed the five children with a gimlet stare. “If I hear that repeated anywhere in the palace, all of you won’t be able to sit for a week and you’ll help Bern the Horse-Breaker clean the stables for the next year.”

They all knew that Billy would make good on that threat. Timidly, Will asked “Why d’you think James the Sea-Hopper made Mom the new queen’s steward?” Glancing at Jonathan, he added “I know we’re an old family, and he used to know her, but the By-Eyries aren’t very wealthy or powerful. We’re not even well known, outside of Haafingar county.”

“We shall have to see,” Jonathan replied, with a glance toward his wife. It wasn’t just the steward that Hopper had banished and replaced. The court wizard, a Breton woman that the palace household all collectively pretended was not a vampire, had been dismissed, as had the previous head cook and the butler and almost all of the attendants to the queen’s wardrobe, even the ones that were purely ceremonial.

Hopper had ordered the palace staff stripped down to the bare minimum needed to keep the rooms clean, the fires lit, and food on the table, so initially they’d assumed that Elivette was bringing a large amount of her own attendants with her from High Rock – but Nancy had heard from the head housekeeper that only half a dozen rooms were being prepared for the party arriving with the ship.

The city, frothing with anticipation, the crowds gathered to see their young queen and her huge retinue sailing in from Northpoint.

Except as the ship docked, the banners of the wolf of Solitude waving in the breeze, when the passengers stepped off the ship, only four people emerged.

“James the Sea-Hopper, Thane of Haafingar,” the herald announced. “Lady Robin Buckley. Steven, Lord Harrington. And Elivette of Laeloria, High Queen of Skyrim!”

_Azura help us all_ , Jonathan thought, staring at the small group. _This must be a joke_.

\---

Middas, 16th of Hearth Fire, 4th Era Year 202  
The Dead Wolf Inn, City of Shornhelm, High Rock Province

The stable boy was getting the horses ready and Hopper watched the process of the two securing their saddlebags.

“I don’t think I really need to tell you that I’m not comfortable with the two of you doing this,” Hopper said casually.

He watched Steve help Robin into her saddle before mounting his own. She was a decent rider, but it would never be as natural for her as it came to him. They intended to sell all of their horses before leaving for Solitude, so he hoped these received slightly better treatment than the last pair. He didn’t think Steve was ever going to get over the loss of Abrielle, but even an Indrik wasn’t immortal and Robin’s previous mount, a little chestnut mare, never stood a chance against a Daedroth.

Settling into her seat, Robin held the reins in gloved hands. “If it’s a queen you want, a queen El will be,” she said curtly, “But even we can’t produce a royal wardrobe and toilette out of thin air, Hop.”

Steve let his mount circle around to the opposite side of the stable yard – Robin would be going west and he, east. He lets himself smile, feeling the dark edges of it in his expression. “Besides,” he said with a curl of his lips. “How many people can say they’ve robbed every noble in High Rock?”

“You have six weeks,” Hopper said, instead of choosing to comment on that. “The boat will leave Northpoint on the 1st of Sun’s Dusk. Miss the departure time, and you’ll have to find your way into Solitude by horseback – and since that involves hard riding through the Druadach Mountains filled with wild Reachmen, I suggest you get back on time.”

“Maybe they’ll recruit us,” Robin said, with a cheeky smile. The Forsworn were Bretons native to Skyrim, descended from some of the first Bretons to exist.

“Ha.” He could not imagine Robin and Steve – terribly attached to feather-ticked mattresses, good wine, and silk finery – lasting more than a day with the mud soaked wild men of the Reach. The majority of the time, he could hardly believe that they were anything more than frivolous socialites, they were so good at playing the part. He patted Robin’s mount. “Safe return.”

Perhaps she thought he was doubting them, doubting their loyalty or their commitment, though nothing was further from his mind. Taking up the reins, she said “We’ll meet again.”

And both geldings bolted off into the night.

\---

Solitude, Present Day

The nobles were actually dressed appropriately for Solitude in Sun’s Dusk, which shocked each of the adults. Perhaps Hopper had been giving them advice. Most foreign visitors either thought that they could miraculously survive the bitter sea wind and cold climate or they came to Whiterun in midsummer dressed in bear fur. The lady – Robin Buckley – in particular was well wrapped in a long cloak of pale gray wool trimmed in snowy sabre cat fur. Her hair was cut short the way some lady-mages did sometimes.

The lord walked with their little queen’s gloved hand in his, navigating the icy pier with smooth steps. Too smooth.

Sometimes the people in the city outside the palace walls said that the By-Eyries had an elf in their bloodlines, which struck the palace household as a particularly cruel way to say that Joyce and her children were made smaller than good Nords should be.

Billy didn’t know about any of that – but there was no way he was fully human, and Billy didn’t mean in the way that all Bretons had a few drops of Mer in them, the way Buckley and Her Majesty looked.

Though the lord and the lady both carried short blades belted to their waists, Harrington moved more like a dancer than a fighter, his movements just a hair too fluid to be human. And no man born of Man could ever be as pretty as he was.

Harrington had more than some pointed ears beneath that ridiculous mane of dark hair, Billy could see it in the lush sweep of his eyelashes, the almost obscene fullness to his mouth, the liquid darkness of his eyes – too enormous and dewy to be anything but the eyes of a Mer.

It made the hairs on the back of Billy’s neck stand up. Many Nords had a suspicion of Mer nowadays, given the hatred of the Thalmor in Skyrim’s borders. Billy, despite serving for the Imperial army, was no exception. That he showed up beside Billy’s new queen did nothing to ease those suspicions.

Eyes narrowed, he watch Harrington’s hold on the High Queen’s hand. Had the Thalmor found a way to infiltrate Skyrim at Her very heart?

\---

Morndas, 19th of Frost Fall, 4th Era Year 202  
The Sloshing Tankard, City of Northpoint, High Rock Province

They showed up with a couple of weeks to spare, but because they were Robin and Steve, they had to do it in the most unsettling way possible.

“Masser and Secunda!” he swore, jumping a foot in the air. Quickly, he shut the door of his rented room and locked it behind him. Bolts of cloth were strewn all over every surface, including a very puzzled El, who stood draped in fine fabric like a clothes mannequin with Steve muttering things to himself from his spot at her knees where he was embroidering with concentrated ferocity. Robin was at the end of the bed and appeared to be hemming multiple dresses. “ _What_ in Oblivion are you doing?!”

“You said you wanted her to have clothes!” Steve complained, painstakingly stitching in a beautiful series of large bluebells along the bottom of the gown.

Somewhat dumbfounded, Hopper said “Could we not just **_buy_** her some?!”

Steve scoffed “The queen of Skyrim’s wardrobe isn’t made by a local seamstress or the town tailor. At the very least, her coronation outfit has to be something extraordinary, something no one’s ever seen.”

Robin, finishing the hem on a petticoat and moving on to a fine linen nightgown, caught his expression. “I know that it’s irritating,” she said, changing the thread on her needle. “And frivolous. and silly, and the steps to making her pass as a legitimate ruler are a careful dance that will often feel pointless and foolish, but those steps are all necessary if Elivette is to be viewed as a real queen.”

Humming, Steve added “She will seem strange enough to them – we’ll do all we can to soften the impact. Robin can make her _act_ like a queen, and I can make her _look_ like one. After that, it will be up to Elivette to win them to her cause.”

Stressed, he said “Without speaking to them?”

Startled, Robin and Steve looked at each other and then at Elivette and Hopper. “Speaking?” Steve repeated. “What do you mean, ‘without speaking’?”

“The first to hear my voice shall perish,” El said calmly, gazing up at the ceiling. A slow trickle of blood seeped down from her nose. “And the first to touch me shall know of my nature.”

\---

Present Day

Billy did not feel any more assuaged by the introduction of their new High Queen. If anything, he was more certain than ever there was something more going on in this situation, hidden just below the surface.

For one thing, Elivette did not behave like any child he’d ever met. Though she certainly seemed like an ordinary child at first glance, a closer look had made the hairs at his nape prickle at the weight of her eerie stare. Those were the eyes of an adult, the eyes of the grizzled old war veterans, not the eyes of a little girl.

She walked, she sat, she ate her food and drank her mead like a grown noblewoman. He would also say that she spoke like one, too, but thus far their queen had yet to speak to anyone, which was the other reason Billy found her so unsettling. Additionally, Elivette didn’t laugh or smile or frown or really make any sort of facial expression at all.

Billy half wanted to throttle James the Sea-Hopper and ask what in Oblivion he’d done to this girl, because no child – no _person_ – should behave that way.

She was seated at the head of the table and sipped delicately from her golden goblet, and nibbled at her food, and did not speak aloud the entire meal.

Hopper, even more bizarrely, stood behind her like a threatening parent, daring anyone to approach his liege. Occasionally, she leaned over and murmured something into the ears of her Breton companions, but never did Elivette raise her voice to the entire hall.

An hour past sundown, she stood up abruptly and the lady Breton immediately stood and took her arm, leading the girl away from the hall, apparently to retire for the evening. The hall had quieted at the young queen’s sudden motion and had fell nearly silent at her equally sudden departure.

The lord looked entirely unconcerned by these events, drinking Colovian wine and having an animated conversation with one of the former Thanes about acquiring a knew horse, better suited to the Skyrim climate.

“And also Katla’s by the docks,” Bryling was saying. “You’ll want to go there if you’re looking a nice country riding mount rather than a warhorse, perhaps for Lady Robin?”

Harrington laughed lightly, a sweet pure sound that put Billy’s teeth on edge. “No, I don’t think so. Robin is an adequate rider, but she doesn’t really care for the activity on it’s own merits.”

“That’s a shame! It can be a nice way to take in the air. If you’re looking for company, Willem is an excellent horsemen – you should let him show you the countryside.”

“Willem?” Harrington said with another laugh, this time incredulous. “The steward’s little boy? He seems a touch young to be out riding alone.”

“Oh, no – not Will. Willem Hare-Groves. Jonathan was his spell-slinger in the war and he brought him back to Solitude with him.”

“Billy,” he said curtly, before the silly cow could start giving the elfling his whole life story. Nobody in the palace but Jonathan still called him Willem for that exact reason. Everyone from the kitchen maids to the pages mistook him for Joyce’s other son. “The palace household calls me Billy. From clan Hare-Groves.”

“Interesting,” Harrington drawled, and once more the hairs at the back of Billy’s neck prickled as those keen Mer’s eyes fixed upon him. “You’re very young to have already come home from war. What do you do here in the palace, _Billy_?”

He met his stare with an icy glare of his own. “I’m Captain of the palace Watchmen. You’ll find that in Skyrim, I’m an old veteran.” Billy looked him up and down, appraising him and finding himself unimpressed by such a pretty, foppish dandy. “What exactly do _you_ plan to do with your time here, Harrington?”

He grinned at Billy, idly twirling a butter knife with such grace and precision that he started to think maybe that blade at Harrington’s belt wasn’t quite as decorative as he’d initially thought. “Well, I suppose you could call me the Queen’s housecarl. That is what you call it, right?” His grin held something sharp inside it. “Robin and I see to Her Majesty’s every comfort. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for our El.”

“El?” Bryling repeated curiously.

“Oh yes,” he hummed. “Elivette is such a large clunky name for a little girl. We’ve always called her El.”

\---

Robin was barely out of the great dining hall before she felt El’s weight beginning to sink toward the floor and pulled up hard on her arm. “No, no, no, my darling,” she said, looking around frantically. “Come on, El, just a few more minutes, you need to walk!”

El’s eyes fluttered, eyes glazed, but she didn’t appear to hear her anymore. Hopper, quickly exiting from the hall behind them, hissed “Don’t drag her around!”

“Oh, by all means!” she spat, trying to keep El from sinking to the floor with one hand and gesturing to her dead weight with the other. “Feel free to assist at any time!”

Well-practiced, he caught the girl below the knees and across the shoulders, easily hefting her weight in his arms. “You don’t think me carrying her around won’t look suspicious?”

“Probably less suspicious than me trying to drag her back to her rooms unnoticed,” Robin countered. They both fell silent as a pair of kitchen maids walked up the stairs with trays of sweets.

“What a precious girl!” one of them cooed, smiling at Hopper and Robin. “Such a nice papa, too!”

Only Robin caught his wince at ‘papa’, but the other maid realized she was gazing upon their new queen. “Oh, it’s Her Majesty!” she gasped. “Let me girl By-Eyries the steward! She can take you to Elivette’s rooms.”

“Yes, thank you,” Hopper said weakly, relieved that one of them at least possessed some good sense.

“Oh!” Joyce said, startled to see the young queen in Hopper’s arms. As he hoped, her mothering instincts made her instantly sympathetic. “It must’ve been such a hard day for her.”

“Too much excitement,” he agreed, feeling like a giant ass for lying to his old friend’s face. He was taking advantage of her kind nature, and that was part of why he’d selected her to be El’s palace steward. She was terribly clever, more clever than he would prefer if he were being perfectly honest, but El’s age would work to blind her, would serve to convince her that El was an ordinary person.

Robin quickly covered El in the fur and wool wrap as El’s eyelids flickered rapidly, hiding her face from view. As Joyce led them back to the Jarl’s quarters, she silently fell behind them, almost vanishing into the background the way she did.

Joyce said “She is a…very quiet child. So well-behaved. I’ve never seen such a grown-up little girl.”

Trying for understated and demure, he said “I think she was trying to impress with her good manners.”

Joyce, may The Nine bless her, pretended that El was not a strange and eerie child. “She’s very well-mannered indeed. She must’ve practiced every day since she was made queen.”

That was true enough. “I don’t doubt it. Elivette takes her new responsibilities very seriously.”

She paused as they came into the Jarl’s apartments. “I’m…not certain that’s the sort of thing a twelve-year-old should be concerned with, Hop.”

Robin did demure much better than he did. She didn’t even have to lie. “Elivette was destined for queenship. She’s such a special girl.”

It was said lightly enough that Robin didn’t sound like she was prophesizing, and seriously enough that Joyce had to know she was sincere.

Aware that his presence in El’s own personal bedroom would be considered odd at best, Hopper allowed himself to be sweetly dismissed by Robin after placing her on the bed. A last glance over his shoulder as he ushered Joyce out allowed him to glimpse El beginning to thrash.

Fuck. He needed to make sure Joyce got away from the royal apartments. She was sensitive enough to feel a spike in magic and he’d rather put off that question for as long as possible. Quietly, Joyce said “I can see that she means a great deal to you, Hop. And I know that losing Sarah was hard. I cannot even imagine…ah…”

“She’s mine,” Hopper said abruptly, partly to get her to stop talking, and partly because it was true – though not in the way he knew he was allowing her to assume. “Elivette is mine, Joyce.”

Her expression and stunned silence did volumes to communicate her shock.

Allowing his truest statement of the night, he said “Skyrim is my gift to her.”

\---

“Where in Kynareth’s almighty creation have you fucking been?” Robin demanded, huffing strands of sweaty hair out of her eyes.

The tunnel was damp and chilly, and without Steve there, she didn’t have enough available magical energy to warm herself. She’d been digging for nearly three hours and hadn’t managed to get further than a few yards in. She was clammy, sweating, shivering, dusty, exhausted, and on the verge of punching Steve in the face.

“I couldn’t just leave the hall early,” he protested, tossing his silk jacket into the corner like the careless rich boy he was. “The three of you had already disappeared less than halfway through the party! We look suspicious enough, Rob, I had to keep making nice!”

“Whatever,” she grumbled, knowing he was probably right. “Can I get a hand, please?”

Stilling, Steve gathered the force of his magicka before flinging it straight at Robin in a soft blue glow, which lit up her whole body. She let out a low relieved sigh, feeling warmer and less tired as Steve’s reserves of magicka poured into her.

Her back straightened, and she flung out her own spell, a shock of crackling green energy which turned a huge section of the dirt and rock wall into powder.

Even with Steve there to pour his own power into her every fifteen minutes or so, she couldn’t make more than twice her previous progress in an hour, and Steve stopped her when she started to wobble on her feet.

“Come on, Rob. You won’t be reaching the Sea of Ghosts tonight or even tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”

Steve had to half-carry her as he lifted the tapestry of Saint Nerevar away from the tunnel entrance and stumbled out into El’s bedroom. Hopper was watching over El as her hands made restless motions upon the duvet, laid out on the bed. His brows were pinched together with worry. “It’s gotten worse,” he said, catching her fingers before she could scratch her own face. “She was never this restless before, even outside of the focus pool.”

“It’s the sea,” Robin slurred, letting Steve help her over the lip of the tunnel entrance. “I think it’s made her stronger. Or her powers stronger, anyway.”

“What does that mean?” Steve asked, glancing between her and Hopper.

“It means I have to go faster,” she said in a resigned voice. “Now get me in a bath.”

“Okay, you didn’t ask nicely, but I’ll do it because I love you,” Steve said mildly, supporting her as she stumbled from the room.

“Oblivion take you,” she swore, some of the craggy backwaters of Bravil emerging in her syllables.

Steve resisted the reflexive urge to tease her about it, half carrying her into her rooms, levitating a heavy wooden tub behind them that would ordinarily take two of the ladies maids to lift. Telekinesis spells weren’t precisely Steve’s specialty, but he got a lot of use from basic levitation. Another one allowed him to carry all the water needed to fill the tub in multiple buckets using just one trip.

After filling the basin, he shook Robin’s shoulder. “Come on, Rob, you have to heat it yourself,” he said, heaving her up from the hearth rug into front of the fire, thoughtfully kept warm by the maid. “If I do it, you’re either gonna sit in barely warm ice water or you’re going to boil alive as soon as you step in.”

Robin grumbled again. “I have to do everything.”

“Yes, I know. It’s a terrible hardship being smart and competent while I get to be the pretty one,” Steve said, somewhat sarcastically.

“Fuck you,” she said, without heat, pulling at her dress ineffectually. “I’m the pretty one, too! Help me, damn it! I can’t get out of this prison.”

He could’ve summoned one of the few ladies-in-waiting kept on staff. But that would mean tomorrow morning, the topic of conversation below stairs would be Lord Steven summoning a maid two hours before dawn to assist Lady Robin when they were both sweating, tired, and covered in dirt.

He doubted they would actually put the right story together because it was too bizarre to be believed, but that was not something they needed the staff discussing amongst themselves.

The actual topic of gossip might’ve been that Lord Steven was found sleeping in Lady Robin’s bedchambers, except that the person Steve saw when he blinked his eyes open at the crack of dawn was Joyce By-Eyries.

“I thought you were El’s steward,” he said hoarsely, rolling over on the feather mattress, staring at the red velvet of the four poster’s draped ceiling.

Joyce jumped, then glanced at him and resumed stirring the fireplace back to life. “Marta and Yulia have fevers,” she said, brushing wood slivers from the apron she wore over a dress just a little too fine to be doing that level of manual labor. “I decided to keep them away from the rest of the household, only a day away from Her Majesty’s coronation.”

“Mm.”

Joyce watched with amusement as the young lord’s eyes fell closed and then, startled, immediately shot open again. He looked exhausted and worn down, which was odd because she didn’t recall there being a hunting party last night.

“Would you like me to bring a breakfast for you and Robin?” she asked kindly as Steve sat up, hair askew.

Despite the pointed ears she espied beneath that wild cloud, Steve and Robin were reminding Joyce more and more of her own Jonathan and Nancy, and to a lesser extent, Billy. Billy was a full grown man by the time Jon brought him home of course, but he had that same air about him that these two did – young adults who’s become too independent too quickly. He was only half-tame, some days, and he complained about the bitter cold in Solitude, but by now Billy was hers as much as Will or Jon or Nancy were.

“Um,” Steve mumbled sleepily, charming her further. “Could you just send up a tray for coffee and some toast? I want her to sleep as long as she can.”

“You both look a little young to be married, but I suppose you’d be about the same age as my Jonathan and his wife Nancy.”

Steve shivered hard in the chilly air as he exited the bed and Joyce had to suppress a smile as he nearly tripped over his own shoes, pausing halfway through the action of slipping a warming pan on his abandoned half of the mattress. “Um, we’re not married, ma’am.” Without looking at her. “We’re not-not, uh, together. Rob’s kind of like my…sister.”

She was more than that, in a way, because they had found each other at a point in time when they most needed each other. But that was too difficult (and dangerous) to explain to a nice lady like Hopper’s friend.

But Joyce watched him tuck the warming pan in beside Robin and she understood it anyway. Jonathan and Billy were like that. The Nords called a ‘shield-brother’ or ‘shield-sister’. She doesn’t think Bretons have that concept, though.

\---

El was living in someone else’s bones again.

Sometimes, that was very bad, because the person she lived in was terrible. But this time, it was okay.

These were familiar bones, like finding North upon the compass.

It was so familiar at this point, El knew who she was even if she didn’t know where was or even _when_ she was.

It was still a little disorienting to be looking down at them instead of up, but Hopper was at least two feet taller than her real physical body. He was watching Robin, her skin nearly translucent by firefight, stacks of worn books by her elbow and another volume cracked open on her lap.

His voice was more resonant than her own as well, thrumming up from the center of their chest. "Are you saying that you don't understand what's there?"

"Yes." Steve said, from somewhere beyond the tower of books. He sounded annoyed.

"No." Robin said at the same time, looking up at them and rubbing at her eyes. 

Hopper waited patiently - Robin and Steve were their own organism within themselves, but if he gave them time, they would pause and backtrack until he could catch up. 

Steve shuffled papers around, laying a quill down and stretching his back out. Frantically, he'd been copying down all of the academic shorthand in Martin's books, a shorthand Robin had never been educated in, so that she would be able to read it, too. "I've never seen this level of Conjuration before, Hopper. I think I understand maybe a third of the spell theory happening here."

"The magic is not the part I don't comprehend," Robin said through gritted teeth. "She called him _father_ but Martin the Heretic barely seemed aware that El is a human being." To Steve: "Have you seen the first passages?"

_Oh,_ El thought, comforted now. _We are in the past._

"Yeah, he writes this long passage about taming the power of the gods, receiving the blessing of the Daedra, blah blah blah," Steve said, sounding a bit bored of Martin's ravings. "The Heretic had a high opinion of himself."

The low orange light of the fire made the circles below Robin's eyes stand out in harsh relief. "Steve," she said in a low tone. "That entire piece was about Eleven - _Elivette,"_ she immediately corrected. "Do you think that any child could do what she does? He was describing what he did to make her this way."

Hopper stirred restlessly, an uneasiness coursing through his blood. "How? Why does she have these powers?"

Robin hesitated, eyes full of sympathy. Almost as though she knew El was looking at her behind his eyes. Slowly, attempting to follow Robin's mind where she walked, Steve said "Martin wanted a paradox - he wanted a being powerful enough to worship, a god that he could hold under his own power."

Coaxing him along, she said "But subduing a god is impossible. So Martin decided to make one."

Hopper cannot remaining sitting any longer. Her physical body let out a soft sound of distress as she felt his heart up, fear racing through him. "What are you saying?"

Robin looked incredibly sad. "He took a baby, a newborn on the verge of dying, and found a way to open their spirit to the forces of the universe."

Covering his eyes, Steve sighed heavily as he finally followed Robin to her destination. "Hopper, Martin took a baby, ripped her soul open, and stuffed a god inside. Eleven is baby eleven - the only one to survive her ascension."

"She's a _god_?" Hopper demanded, looking between them wildly.

Apologetic, Robin said "Technically, she's a goddess."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> going forward, when discussing Birthsigns, i will be using a more Oblivion-like structure. for those of you who have no idea what i'm talking about: basically, character creation in Skyrim is there to optimize experimentation, so your Birthsign can be changed at any time (provided you have found the physical location of that's sign's Stone). creation in Oblivion is there to enhance role-playing, so the sign is permanent and supposed to be the one you were...y'know. born under. each sign corresponds to a different month and it's fun to see which one is yours! for example, i was born on the 25th of Second Seed (May), therefore, my Birthsign is The Shadow and I cannot tell you what I'd do to be LITERALLY INVISIBLE for 60 seconds per day. some of them can be a blessing...and a curse.
> 
> Morning Star (January) - The Ritual  
> Sun's Dawn (February) - The Lovers  
> First Seed (March) - The Lord  
> Rain's Hand (April) - The Mage  
> Second Seed (May) - The Shadow  
> Midyear (June) - The Steed  
> Sun's Height (July) - The Apprentice  
> Last Seed (August) - The Warrior  
> Hearthfire (September) - The Lady  
> Frostfall (October) - The Tower  
> Sun's Dusk (November) - The Atronach  
> Evening Star (December) - The Thief

El was both disappointed and curious when she moved into someone else’s bones.

This was also a man – she has become accustomed to the strange difference of the heavy weight of a grown woman’s chest, the peculiar way a man’s trousers feel tighter at the crotch. But this man was much shorter than Jim is – also unhelpful. In El’s experience, most men are. She has lost track of Where and When she is again.

The man she has become is trekking through ankle-deep snows, she can taste the coating of blood upon his tongue, feel it seep through his leather armor, the pain that left her feeling as though their whole belly had been split open like a butchered hog. The cold seeps into them too, though it’s much harder to notice, sweating feverishly and kept warm by their own blood spilling out into the snows. At one point, their legs become too shaky to continue moving. _Am I dying_?

She has no way of knowing if the thought belonged to the man or is one of her own. She has never occupied someone while they died before. It wasn't usually the part considered important enough for her to experience.

Slowly, as though sinking through porridge, their legs begin to give up, just as they lift their eyes to see an archer, a skeleton wielding an iron bow, knocking an arrow in their direction. Weakly, they grasp the hilt of their blade, but without any of the strength or coordination required to draw it.

A thick chunk of ice, sent flying from somewhere in the barren forest behind them, hits the skeleton archer like a spear, sending bones and iron helmet flying, immediately breaking its tenuous grasp on life.

El’s man is a stubborn soul, she thinks, half-kneeling upon the ice but still he struggles to turn and meet their savior…or their new opponent.

The mage is a not a tall man, either, with dark eyes and dark hair that hangs into them, and a short cape that reveals a flash of red whenever he takes a step forward. El isn’t completely certain, but she believes that color of red and the dragon at the front of his leather cuirass marked him as an Imperial soldier.

Her man recognizes this mage.

“By-Eyries,” he croaks, licking the blood from his lips as cold sweat runs down their face. “My…”

Her steward was called that, El recalled. But she was comfortably sure that she was also a woman, older than this man, who could barely even be called so. “In all the time I’ve known you, I’ve never found you to be a lazy man,” the mage says, pulling at their arm and heaving their weight up from the frozen ground. “Come, Willem, up you get.”

“Why have you helped me?” El’s man – Willem – asks, choking on more of his own blood. She had wondered the same thing. She could feel Willem’s instinctive urge to draw away from By-Eyrie’s touch despite the strength he lacked to act on it. He was not, she could tell, accustomed to feeling helpless.

“I am your spell-slinger,” he replies mildly. “It is my duty.”

“I sent you away.” He is weak, confused, disoriented – vulnerable, in this state. “I screamed at you.”

“It is my duty,” the mage repeats, and El doesn’t know how or why, but she knew Willem would be safe with him, even despite his unease. “You needed me.”

The By-Eyries man reminds her of Jim. Perhaps that is why.

She did not know Willem’s next words until they were emerging from their mouth, breathless with pain. “I never knew you were a necromancer.”

“Yes.” He says it with such reluctance that the single word appears dragged from his lips. His dark eyes examine the forest behind them, watching it keenly like a hunter who waits for prey. “Perhaps that shall be a secret just between you and me, Willem.”

A sudden terror pulses through them, almost breath-taking with it’s intensity. El’s physical body gasped aloud, heart speeding up as it tightened around their throat like a noose. He has a vision, in his mind’s eye, of looking down a crumbling set of stairs, stone walls lit by flicking torches. Why does it scare him so?

Willem’s gaze followed the mage's, drew up the snow-covered path, a trail betrayed by the spattering of their own blood along it. In the distance, an ancient ruin of icy stones climbed toward the gray and furious skies, higher up in the mountains.

El did not know why, when his eyes rested upon the cave entrance tucked away with those hills, the forest so quiet and so still, the fear choked him as strongly as any hand ever could. A voice echoed within their mind – a memory?

 _Still a pathetic little boy, weeping for his mummy. Oh yes. I see you, Willem_.

Floors below her room, Billy woke with a gasp, drenched in cold sweat and clutching at the wound in his stomach, though Jonathan had healed it so perfectly the scar was hardly noticeable.

“Shh.” He was startled, surprised, when a familiar hand brushed his hair back from his face. “It’s alright, Willem, it’s just me.”

The dim candlelight did little to help illuminate Jonathan’s dark hair, but he could see the silver chain around his neck, the bright blue of the raw crystal shard hanging from it. “Don’t your wife object to this kinda thing?” he asked hoarsely, swallowing through the rolling of his stomach, salivating through his nausea as he tried to overcome it. “Coming to another man’s room late at night?”

Jon, well used to his idea of humor, ignored Billy like the rotten spoilsport he was. “Maxine called for me,” he murmured, pressing a warm cloth to Billy’s face with the tenderness of long practice. “She told me you were yelling in your sleep again.”

“Mm,” he groaned, laying back into the pillows as Jonathan pressed the cloth over his eyes. It always smelled of spearmint and wild flowers, a special mixture that was Nancy’s own custom creation (for him alone, though Billy didn’t know it). “…she shouldn’t have woke you.”

“I was already awake,” he said lightly, pouring hot water over the herbs he’d already placed in the pot before flipping over the hourglass timer that would tell him when they were done. “Our remaining housemaids became ill. Mom had to wake Nancy to look them over.”

It was well known that Jonathan was the better healer, but his wife was the more skilled Alchemist – unless the maids had been stabbed or maimed she would be of more use to them than he was.

“Mm,” Billy grunted again, and Jonathan knew that he was listening, even if he couldn’t answer while he was fighting with his weak stomach.

He was long past feeling ashamed of being in this state in front of him, even if he hated for Max to see him this way. It scared her, Billy knew it, because it scared him, too. His shaky hands and burning eyes and unsettled stomach. His pale, clammy face. He hated all of it.

Jonathan used another cloth, warm and damp, to wipe the sweat from his face and neck. It hadn’t taken Jon and Nancy long to realize that Billy’s affliction was entirely in his mind – but that knowledge did nothing to make it less real to him.

Silently, patiently, he watched the grains of sand spill down until the three minutes that Nancy’s tea needed to steep were up. She really had created that for Jonathan, because Billy was not the only man with night terrors. The warm compress was created later, when they realized that her soother was no good if Billy couldn’t stand to keep it down.

“Ready?” Jonathan asked quietly, and waited for his nod before passing him the cup. “Bottoms up, Willem.”

“Fine seas and fair winds,” he muttered, knocking it back all in one go, the farewell of voyaging Nords everywhere.

“Fair winds,” he echoed softly, taking the empty cup from his nerveless fingers. Jonathan waited until he was certain that Billy was truly asleep before letting himself leave the room.

Naturally, Nancy was already waiting for him out in the darkened hall, which he probably should have expected. She was chewing at her lip, and Jonathan waited for her to voice her thoughts, before she looked out the window toward the sea, the way that Billy had less than a day ago.

“Do you ever think about going back?” Her question was quiet, but not hesitant.

Jonathan’s answer is the same – soft, but immediate. “No.”

More tentatively, she said “It might bring him a measure of peace, if we could finish what the two of you started.”

Heavily, he said “It would be a suicide march, love. A full squadron of trained soldiers, and we were the only ones to make it back to Morthal alive. I did…many things that I’m not proud of, in those mountains. I can’t make myself regret them, because we both made it home. But I don’t wish to repeat any of them.” He paused and then shook his head. “And I don’t truly think finishing what began that day would erase what Willem endured.”

\---

“So, what’s our plan for the day?” Robin asked, leading the queen of Skyrim, face freshly washed and laced up in purple and red brocade, into Elivette’s private sitting room. “Or maybe I should ask, what are _your_ plans for the day? Because _I_ will be building a path to the Sea of Ghosts.”

“I’m going to sit at court,” El informed her primly. It went without saying that Hopper would be going with her.

“I’m going to look for a new horse,” Steve said, mouth hinting at a smirk. “You should come with me, take in some fresh air for a while. And while we’re in town, you can stop at the Alchemist’s and buy more red wildflowers and lady’s fan.”

Robin was born under the sign of the Atronach – her magic reserves were exceptionally large, even for a Breton, but she couldn’t regenerate it once depleted, not on her own. If she ran out, she either needed a potion or to get Steve (who _could_ self-regenerate) to pour his own store into her. She grimaced. “They call it ‘elves ears’ in Skyrim.” She watched him wince and added, “I’d be extra careful with your grooming here, my friend.”

He huffed and pouted, looking put out, “Well, it’s nice enough weather, so if you’d like to come with me, you could save yourself some coin. I’m sure there’s plenty of wildflowers along the paths.”

She smiled at him faintly, hearing his unspoken worry about being in this new country on his own even in the capital, looking the way he did. “That might be nice.” She looked out at the early morning light. “I’d rather get a start on the tunnels first, though. I can’t begin disappearing for days at a time without looking suspicious. Today, us not being at court with you can just be waved away with an excuse of our laziness, but I’m sure Hop would prefer that we return sooner rather than later.”

He eyed them, much in the same way a tired father would eye his most trouble-making offspring. “I’d really prefer to keep you where I can see you, but I suppose that’s too much to ask for, all things considered.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, El said “Is there a garden here, Jim?”

“Several, I imagine,” he said slowly. “Why?”

“I want to go for a walk,” she said, somehow both commanding and childishly pleading. The two parts of her, which were always present and always vying for control – girl, and goddess.

“Certainly, Highness.” He bowed, with a mischievous glint in his eye, not quite mocking but something near it. The two parts he learned to balance with her – both father and follower, never allowing one to over-rule the other. In either mode of thinking, everything he did was to serve her well-being, her happiness.

Had he been less focused on her happiness in that moment, less focused on working her will, Hopper may have realized what Elivette was orchestrating.

There was a courtyard at the front of the Blue Palace, which Hopper did not want to take her to – every person who needed to enter the palace passed through there, and apart from not wishing to allow everyone to gape at her, there was also the question of how much he could potentially jeopardize her physical safety, out in the open like that.

The kitchens and the barracks he could’ve found blindfolded – the conservatory, the solarium, and the Alchemist’s garden were…less familiar territory for him. In fact, for all that he and Joyce had grown up in the palace, he couldn’t actually remember ever having visited any of those places. He had a decent guess about their location, though.

Unfortunately, the most hazardous part of running a country was that there were no shortage of demands upon your time and the Jarls were well aware of who was signing the paperwork and making the decisions. Almost as soon as they found a large outdoor area of some description, complete with small waterfall and icy-cool stream slipping beneath a wall of the palace (probably to drop back into Solitude’s harbor), Joyce rushed to catch up with them.

“Hop, I’ve been searching for you everywhere! Jarl Ulfric has requested a private meeting with you.” She grimaced, revealing a clear opinion on her idea of this. “Usually, I’d tell anyone who made such a demand that they have no business requesting anything, but Ulfric has already demonstrated that he can make himself an inconvenience if he wishes.”

There was an angry scoff behind her that made Hopper realize that Joyce seemed to possess her own small collection of followers. Her eldest son Jon was easily recognizable – Joyce’s sons were her spitting image – and there was also a stocky and very surly looking blond guardsman, as well as an almost fey-looking young lady that he recalled Joyce introducing as her daughter-in-law. The young lady who scoffed at Ulfric Stormcloak, if he wasn’t mistaken.

Hopper echoed that grimace. That was a well-reasoned argument. “There’s no way in the planes of Oblivion that I would ever bring Elivette into a room with Ulfric Stormcloak, murderer of kings.”

“Yes, I thought you might feel that way,” she said, trying to soothe his temper. “Jonathan will stay here with her, if you like. I’d…prefer that Billy and Nancy came with us to this meeting. Even without Her Majesty there, it’s not wise to trust the jarl not to pick fights. I’d feel better if we weren’t going in there alone.”

Oh. Oh, his steward really was too damn clever.

To confront Ulfric alone was stupidity on a level Joyce knew he would never attempt, and she was also no coward. If Hopper went to this meeting, he wouldn’t be able to prevent Joyce By-Eyries from walking in at his side.

She also knew that he wouldn’t easily trust just anyone, no matter how well-skilled they were, to watch over Elivette – which is why she had offered up her own son. Not only did she know that he would be reluctant to insult her by refusing, she also had to know that if Hopper was really forced to choose a guardian for El that was not himself, Steve, or Robin, it would probably be the By-Eyries.

“Very well,” he said, annoyed that she’d managed him so well within the first twenty-four hours of the job and also feeling guilty for being annoyed. In a way, he was managing her as well, wasn’t he? Apart from that, the reason he’d hired her in the first place was that he knew she’d be an excellent steward. He had no right to be irritated with her when she proved his assumption correct. “If Elivette finds this acceptable-”

No sooner had the words begun to emerge from his mouth when El imperiously held out a gloved hand in Jonathan’s direction, silently issuing her command with such a solemn and authoritative demeanor Jon would’ve found it downright chilling in an adult. As it was, he had to remind himself that this tiny queen was no older than his own Will and placed his hand in hers. The corners of his eyes scrunched as he smiled down at her. “Where to, milady?”

The young queen’s face softened almost imperceptibly, a tiny smile briefly gracing her face before she began walking down one of the garden paths.

Hopper, somewhat helplessly, watched the pair of them stroll between the snowberries and juniper bushes. He was purely in the mindset of a father in that moment – a follower would’ve trusted the judgment of his goddess. But he was also her father and his goddess was still only a little girl, and it was not El’s judgment he mistrusted. It was the fragility of little girls, and the universe’s delight in its own ability to destroy them.

But he could not be with her every second of every day. He would have to hope that chance was on their side, and that El (and Joyce) had chosen well. It would be a shame to have to kill her eldest son.

“Lead on, By-Eyries. Let’s get this circus over with,” he said grimly, storming back down toward the main halls.

Their intrepid group of four was brought up short when halfway into the private drawing room where Joyce had left the Jarl, Hopper suddenly stopped short, eyes narrowed, and said “No.”

As James Sea-Hopper had been too large for her to peer over his shoulder…basically always, Joyce instead leaned around the bulk of his armor to see what was causing his displeasure. There was Ulfric, as expected, and also a man similar in age to themselves that she recognized as the late king Torygg’s cousin. Why…?

“We have not even spoken yet,” Ulfric, being from an eastern province, had a thicker accent than they did, having grown up in the cosmopolitan capital city.

“And yet, I already know exactly what you will say,” Hopper said, dismissive and cold, Joyce’s brows rose both at his audacity and his implication when he sneered “You are here because you think you can persuade me into handing over Skyrim to Torygg’s kinsman and you believe that I don’t have the wit to tell you are trying to place your puppet on the throne.”

The cousin sputtered indignantly at being blatantly called a puppet.

“You are one to speak of puppets,” Ulfric said dangerously, eyes flashing. “You have no right to claim this kingdom in the name of a child!”

“You have no right to claim this kingdom,” he answered flatly, so utterly unmoved by his rage it was nearly impressive. It may have been more impressive if it he weren’t putting their lives in peril.

“ _I_ have no _right_?! **_I_**?!” Ulfric roared. “You have been away from your people for too long, Sea-Hopper – you have lost our traditions and heritage. The throne is won by trial through combat, a trial which I won. That throne your foreign bratling sits upon is _stolen_.”

“You keep using that phrase,” Hopper said dryly. “But trial by combat is only valid if both parties are aware that they competing. I wonder, Stormcloak, if Torygg understood what was happening that day? Conveniently, there are no other witnesses to this event to vouch that he had agreed to ritual combat. Either way, you weren’t able to keep your ill-gotten goods. You were the only ‘nay’ vote in the Moot, as no one would expect Elisif to vote herself out of a queenship, so Elivette is your queen whether this satisfies you or not.”

This appeared to hit a nerve, and Ulfric growled “That mongrel princess is no queen of mine.”

‘Mongrel’ was an old and very unflattering nickname for the Breton race, one long considered unacceptable in polite company and at many points used by both Mer and the other races of Man. Hopper was displeased, but not surprised, by Ulfric’s use of it.

He was surprised when Joyce’s young guardsman held the point of an ebony blade at Ulfric’s throat. Hm. Maybe not just a palace guardsman, then. He – Billy – eyed Ulfric coolly. “You will address the queen as ‘Her Majesty’ or ‘Queen Elivette’, or you will lose your head,” he informed him, alarmingly steady with a blade for such a young man. _Definitely_ not just a guardsman. “Jarl or not, you will show respect to the High Queen of Skyrim.”

“Respect for a stranger, a foreigner? A child ruler? NO,” Ulfric sneered at Hopper. “The least you could have done was take the crown for yourself, Sea-Hopper. That I might have even respected.”

“Come now, Jarl Ulfric,” Joyce said, gently chastising. “I’m sure you can understand the need for a father to provide security for his daughter. I’m sure if you had an heir, you would’ve done the same. Elivette of Laeloria is Hop’s daughter.”

“Daughter?” Ulfric repeated, dumb-founded.

Hopper glared at her. He was somewhat relieved to see that Nancy and Billy looked completely stunned and shocked by this announcement. At least she hadn’t been repeating this all over the castle. “That was told to you in confidence, By-Eyries.”

“I realize that,” she replied, unnervingly calm. “But perhaps Jarl Ulfric would more understanding of your situation if he _why_ you wanted Her Majesty placed so highly in the land of your fathers.”

It was hard to say whether Ulfric Stormcloak was put at ease or not – this information clearly changed his plans, though. He and the flustered cousin of the dead king left not soon afterwards, and the moment they had departed, Hopper turned on his very cunning – too cunning – steward. “By what right,” he demanded hotly, “- _by what right_ did you decide to tell an enemy something you _knew_ I did not wish to become common knowledge?!”

“By right of political strategy!” Joyce snarled back, always happy to give as good as she got, dark eyes blazing. “Ulfric is a traditionalist and a racist, Hopper. You _heard_ what he just called her! This soon into her reign, he’s perfectly capable of amassing another army. He was barely tolerant of Elisif, who ruled by right of marriage. He would not rest a moment with a child, a _foreigner_ , sitting on the throne that he already considers to be his. It will be much harder for him to commit to the idea of killing her when he knows that she is a Nord, your daughter, if only a half-blood.”

Of course, she wasn’t.

Actually, that wasn’t true. Hopper had no idea what El’s parentage was. It was fairly safe to assume that her mother had been a Breton because like Steve, nearly all mixed-race children got the majority of their heritage from their mother, but her father could’ve been an Orc or the Emperor himself for all he knew.

He found himself weighing the relative merits of getting his right-hand troublemakers to assassinate a Jarl – or more specifically, Steve. Illusion was the only school of magic Steve had ever bothered to learn more than a learner’s basics in. With a fast horse he could be there in two days, slip in and out of Windhelm like a ghost, and the biggest threat to El’s power and potentially her life would be dead before breakfast the next day…

“Hop?” Joyce asked, staring at his thunderous resting expression with foreboding.

“Hm?” he grunted to show that he was paying attention.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about assassination?”

“…giving or receiving?” she asked, even more trepidatious now.

“I’m thinking of a way to assassinate Jarl Ulfric without drawing suspicious on Her Highness,” he clarified.

To his further surprise, Joyce’s daughter-in-law Nancy, jaw tight and eyes narrowed ominously, immediately responded, “I’ll do it.”

Billy the not-just-a-guard glanced at her briefly with the hint of alarm on his features, and he was more curious than ever as to why Joyce selected these, out of the entire palace household, to back them in a battle with a rebel jarl. A strange boy whose clan-name he didn’t recognize and Jonathan’s – apparently very bloodthirsty – wife.

Hopper, not even bothering to hide his smile, said “Oh, you will, will you?” He shook his head. “Let’s reserve that for truly dire circumstances.”

\---

Jonathan did not know what he should expect from his young queen.

His short impression of her the day before during his brief glimpses of her in the palace led him to believe that their diminutive ruler might be…well, perhaps a little dim or a little more fragile than the pack of half-wild animals that were the palace children he was more accustomed to.

He began to assume that perhaps Hopper had made some sort of honor-oath to one of her parents or guardians, some vow that he would provide all he could for her in their absence. It was just the sort of thing to happen to Hopper, it really was.

It became clear when she was left alone with that Queen Elivette was neither dim nor was she particularly fragile.

Jonathan was dragged enthusiastically through the garden paths by a very demanding lady, who would point to various plants and trees before gazing at him expectantly.

It became clear what she was so intent on when, after he began an explanation of the jazbay clinging to the rocks near the waterfall feature, Elivette pulled a worn journal bound in faded green leather and began copying his description down onto the pages with a pen set pulled from a little wooden case hidden in the pocket of her voluminous skirts.

Watching her from over her shoulder, he could see that this book contained an entire encyclopedia of flora, written in Her Highness’s carefully placed script. Many of the earlier pages were also illustrated with such a finely detailed hand that he suspected they were _not_ done by her. Elivette’s penmanship was…not poor, but it carried the characteristics of someone who was not quite confident in their ability to write – it was the script of a learner. But those illustrations were created by an expert, something Will might one day acquire the skills for.

He watched her diligently make notes below her new entry on the deathbell flower, leaving a square of space, presumably to allot her mysterious illustrator a place to add on to later. Out loud, Jonathan mused, “You don’t seem to be deaf.”

Elivette’s head perked up, head tilted with curiosity as her attention returned to him. Amused, he said “Alright, clearly not deaf, no. Can you really not speak?”

Face scrunching up impishly, El shrugged.

“You aren’t sure?” he said.

She shook her head, keeping deliberate eye contact with him. Watching for his reaction, it seemed.

Suspicious now, Jonathan paused midway through the motion of plucking a handful of snowberries for El to taste. He stared at her. Surely, she couldn’t be trying to say that she- “You can speak, can’t you?”

Elivette nodded quite definitively, smirking at him as Jonathan’s jaw dropped. Shocked, despite his hunch that this was the case. “Why aren’t you talking then?”

Another shrug, and El placed a finger to her lips.

Jonathan understood.

“A secret,” he whispered, and she nodded again, looking quite pleased with him. Her brown eyes shined with warmth and knowing as she continued with her botanical notes.

Another, even more uneasy suspicion overcame him just then. It was impossible, it was madness to think it. But briefly, Jonathan had the overwhelming feeling that Elivette had engineered this whole meeting with him.

\---

As shocked as they were about the revelation that the high queen was actually James Sea-Hopper’s illegitimate daughter, Billy and Nancy did have their own jobs to attend to throughout the day.

Nancy was the current caretaker and archivist for the collection of books and objects in the palace’s large library. Since the household staff had been trimmed down, she also took turns with Joyce and Jonathan in minding the palace’s children (sans the young queen, of course).

Mostly, their time with her was spent reading, though if they behaved themselves, Nancy often allowed them to see some of the more exciting parts of the library’s collection. “This,” she murmured, with a hand on Maxine’s shoulder, “Is the Jagged Crown. Worn by the High King or High Queen of Skyrim since at least the time of King Harald Hand-Free, in the First Era.”

Eyeing the crown somewhat dubiously, Lucas asked “Is that what Sea-Hopper will put on Elivette tomorrow?”

The question wasn’t without merit – the Jagged Crown was a large, rather hideous and bulky creation with large tusk-like spikes of bones to form a ragged halo-like corona around the wearer’s head. It was also definitely not designed to be worn by a little girl.

“Mm, no,” she admitted with a smile. “It’s really not possible for it to fit Elivette just yet. During her coronation, she’ll be given the Crown of Freydis, and she’ll wear that until she grows into this one.”

Confused, Mike said, “But I thought the Crown of Freydis won’t let itself be worn unless it thinks you’d be a good ruler?”

“Yes, that’s correct, Mike,” Nancy said, masking her uneasiness. “You’ve obviously been paying attention to your history. But Sea-Hopper was able to get ahold of the crown and Elivette has already proved to the Moot that she was able to wear it.”

Though she doesn’t say it out loud, Mike shrewdly said “Is that why he was able to convince most of the Moot to vote for her?”

“…probably.” The Nords liked their traditions and they could be very superstitious about things like that. Though most of the Jarls had entered that meeting as skeptical as they could possibly be, watching James Sea-Hopper place Freydis’ crown upon the little girl had converted most of his stunned audience.

That crown had been created to ‘choose’ the High King – or in this case, Queen – during times of successional dispute. Neither Elisif the Fair nor Ulfric Stormcloak had been able to place it on their own heads, but James Sea-Hopper had brought it down upon his daughter’s head with ease.

“Where’s Laeloria?”

Nancy’s attention was brought over to Dustin – who’d asked the question – and Will, peering at a large map of the continent of Tamriel pinned to the nearest wall. “What?”

“Where’s Laeloria?” he repeated insistently, and Will added “We don’t see it anywhere in High Rock.”

“Jim has already informed us that Elivette’s title didn’t come with any land,” she said automatically. “It’s probably more of an ancestral title – the Bretons are funny about hierarchical rules like that. It’s possible the land it was named for has been renamed or taken over by another family.”

“Huh,” Will murmured. “It seems like kind of a funny name.”

It occurred to Nancy after dinner, sitting in the empty library with a cup of tea and putting the day’s materials away, that Will was right. It was a funny name. For one thing ‘Laeloria’ was not a Breton-esque name. In fact, it sounded like Merethic name, something derived from one of the elvish languages – or Elnofex, as a Mer would say. Most languages of the continent were, with the exception of Jel, the speech of the Argonians, but the lizard-men were said to be the first to live in Tamriel, so that wasn't so strange.

It was, as she discovered, based on Ayleidoon, the long-dead language of the Ayleids – the Heartland Elves, who enslaved many of the early humans that appeared in Tamriel. It had taken Nancy nearly an hour of searching in dictionaries, and she was surprised and dismayed to find the name in a book on known Ayleid ruins. Nancy had never seen one, though she knew they were large structures of white stone and were often filled with dead things. They didn’t have any in Skyrim – it was too far to the north for the Ayleid. That part of the world they were content to leave to their distant elvish cousins, the Dwarves, or ‘Dwemer’ – ‘deep elves’. Like the Ayleids, though, the Dwarves were long ago extinct from the land.

Laeloria actually _was_ a real physical location…in Valenwood, thousands of miles from the region that Elivette was supposed to be born in, and the entry on it made Nancy abruptly close the book with a harsh snap.

 _Laeloria  
_ Located in the Green Hall region of Grahtwood in the province of Valenwood _. Formerly known as ‘_ Twyllvarlais’ _–_ the Well of Stars _– this ruin is particularly notorious for its reputation of lingering evil and the reason for its sudden name change in historical records remains unknown. Locals will strongly warn against entering its halls. Though known colloquially by many in the area as_ ‘the Haunted Pit _’, its true name ‘_ Laeloria’ _translates to_ Throat of Darkness.

 _Queen Elivette of Laeloria_ , Nancy thought with a hard shudder. _It does sound much better than Queen Elivette from the Throat of Darkness_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd love to know if you guys are already able to spot the quest references i've weaved through this story :D


	3. Chapter 3

“I really don’t mean to rush you,” Hopper drawled, brows raised as he watched Steve frantically trying to sew wolf fur to the collar of the cloak Hopper would wear in his new status as statesmen of the realm. “…but I was under the impression you were done with this yesterday.”

Glaring from his spot at the foot of El’s bed, Steve’s fingers worked furiously, swearing loudly when he pricked himself with the needle. “ **_Fuck!_ ** Yes, and **_I_ ** thought I’d have plenty of time to put on the finishing touches to everything before I had to do her hair – but we’ve had some _setbacks_.”

Robin, who was beside him attempting to finish her own dress, since many things had been more important than ensuring that she didn’t trip over her own hem. El’s coronation gown had been top priority, so she and Steve had left several things for the last minute in favor of being sure their Elivette looked like a High Queen instead of a beggar princess. Mouth twisted unhappily, she said “She’s been prophesizing on and off for hours. The sea has been driving her mad.”

“ _What_?” he demanded, “Why didn’t you send for me?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Steve said sarcastically. “Who exactly could I send? Robin still has to finish her outfit and mine, since I volunteered to help with yours. And I still have to finish her hair. And that was _before_ she insisted upon wearing the mithril battle dress underneath the one I’ve spent weeks sewing.”

“Well, what did she say?”

Steve put down the finished cloak and began brushing El’s hair. It was hard to believe that it had only grown around her ears six months ago. Robin had some kind of fancy potion she’d spent every night for months dumping over her head to make it grow at a faster pace, until her hair was an acceptable length for a girl-child born in nobility. Hopper had no idea what it was made of or where she got it, but Robin and Steve had both assured him that it was a common enough cosmetic in High Rock and very safe – as long as it was used on Man or Mer.

“I’m _right here_ ,” El pointed out, irked, visibly trying not to fidget as Steve began the work of carefully braiding and sewing her hair in place.

“Do you remember any of it?” he challenged, failing at his attempt not to look _too_ amused.

“No,” she mumbled, scowling at the bearskin rug in front of the hearth.

“We wrote it down,” Robin said helpfully, nodding to the writing station hastily set beside a chair beside El’s window, looking out over Solitude Harbor and the Sea of Ghosts, a quill still sitting in the open bottle of ink.

She really did mean ‘we’, he realized, heart sinking as he lifted a length of parchment with Robin’s neat textbook cursive and Steve’s rushed scribbling all over it. The parchment was almost completely covered in writing – fairly regular and well-spaced in the first half and growing more and more scrunched together as they had to fit more words on a dwindling amount of space.

**…the point of puncture, of first entry, of the tapping. Find the key to loose the lock, to jump beneath the deadly rock.**

**[…unintelligible, elvish dialect? Unknown]**

**You look to your left, you see one way. You look to your right, you see another. And to look left and right in the stream of time? What do they see then? Forgotten.**

**[unintelligible…unknown elvish] …**

_Find the key…to loose the lock…_

_Robin: What are we looking for, El?_

_The heart of you. And the heart of me. Hidden away. Forgotten. Sequestered. Deep inside their greatest knowings._

**Steve: Where, El? Where is it hidden?**

**The point of puncture, of first entry. The tapping. The deepest doors listen for singing. Play the attitude of notes proper for opening. Soft and subtle. Too low for hearings.**

_Robin: And when will this be happening?_

_We shall part ways. [unintelligible, language unknown] : woah maize wah dee vol you-nar (?)_

_Into the dark with you. She will bring the light._

_And She will bring Her light. Glorious. Terrible. The brightness. Your salvation and comfort. She will bring it. For you._

_Robin: Who?_

_The snow queen. [unknown elvish]_

_The ones they saw. The ones they thought they saw. Cast upon where Dwemer cities slept, the yearning spire hidden learnings kept. I_ _know_ _you can know._

_[unintelligible, unknown elvish]_

_We will part ways – [language unknown] woah maize wah dee vol you-nar (?)_

**I must part ways with you and the thief. You must travel through the darkness, until Her light reaches you. And you will meet me at the point of puncture.**

**Steve: Where are we going? I need to know where we’re going, El.**

**Cast upon where Dwemer cities slept, the yearning spire hidden learnings kept. You will follow the storm, into the mountains... In the deep. Below the dark. Trust Eleven. She knows you can** **know** **.**

**Steve: What does that mean? What do we need to know?**

**[end transcription]**

_…_

Hopper was numb, utterly hollowed out by this…could it be _called_ a prophecy? Steve and Robin hadn’t even been able to translate some of her ramblings and the parts that they could transcribe were the ravings of a madwoman. More chilling still was the prediction that Robin and Steve would be leaving her – he didn’t think it was presumptuous to assume that Steve was ‘the thief’ in this prediction. More than perhaps anything else he could be called in his lifetime, ‘thief’ fit best.

But he and Robin had vowed to stay with Elivette for as long as she might need them, and they were thieves and liars, but he had no reason to doubt their devotion to her. Did this mean she would no longer need them? Or did it mean that this task was so important, El thought it would be necessary for them to break their vows?

And, Hopper realized with a large but silent dismay, he really didn’t have the time needed to contemplate this right now. One way or another, El would need to be pushed out the doors of the palace, paraded through the streets in front of her new subjects and, once at Castle Dour, officially crowned the High Queen of Skyrim in front of all the Jarls, foreign nobility and dignitaries, Imperial officials, and any townsfolk lucky enough to squeeze into the square afterwards.

“Robin,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately steady. “Will she be well enough to do the ceremony in less than two hours?”

Robin, despite her profession, had an unexpectedly profound talent in the art of Restoration, and her skills were often in use in keeping El somewhat lucid in moments when she absolutely had to be. It was a drain both on Robin’s focus and magicka if she had to do it all the time but for today it was a necessary use of her resources. “Let me worry about her mind,” the woman said shrewdly. “You just make sure nobody we like sits within earshot of her.”

“I feel fine now,” El promised, looking up at him from her diminutive height. The train on her gown was enormous – each thread and bead was sewn on by hand with Steve’s skillful work. The front was a tapestry of bluebells, picked out in threads of periwinkle and violet and blue. Blue was a color associated with the Breton homeland, but the long train in back was a field of thistle and juniper and snowberries – historically and culturally associated with Skyrim and the Nords.

It would be an extraordinary feat of strength for her to _stand_ never mind walk around in the garment if she were an ordinary little girl, but as it was, Hopper was absolutely certain El was casting a fortification charm on herself to be able to bear its weight.

On top of this, she would need to be bundled into warm furs for walking through her new capital city – Solitude was warmer in winter than say, Eastmarch nestled among the high mountains or Morthal which was shrouded in mist for all but the hottest, sunniest days in summer. But the wind coming in off the Sea of Ghosts was a fearsome thing that even the city, high above Solitude Harbor, couldn’t block.

“Put this on,” Steve commanded curtly.

Normally, Hopper would give him some _very long looks_ for such a snappy attitude, but Steve did not lose his charming façade for no reason. He wondered if hearing Eleven’s prophecy in person had been even more unsettling than the paper version. So, he was fitted into the wolf’s fur cloak and kept his peace so that Steve and Robin could get changed into outfits more appropriate for such an occasion and went to help El into her gloves and furs.

\---

Hoping that El’s prophesizing this morning would be the only thing that threw them off was probably hoping for too much, in retrospect.

Steve was waiting for Robin to meet him near the south hall when he heard it.

“ _Serani_ ,” a voice hissed behind Steve, making whirl around in the middle of the corridor, cold sweat breaking over his skin in gooseflesh. “ _Serani Hlaalu, the only son of Varani, the bastard heir of House Hlaalu. Serani. Serani_.”

“I don’t answer to that name,” he said through clenched teeth. “ _Dispel_.”

He scowled at the Sister, a Dark Elf woman with blue-black hair and amber-orange eyes which caught the light of the torches eerily. Her Brotherhood armor was even darker still – almost absorbing the light and gathering shadows around her body. Lithe as a cat in night-time, she slithered forward, her pretty face creasing into a frown as Steve crossed his arms and glared at her.

“Brother,” she whispered, reaching toward his face with a slender, gray-skinned hand. “Why have you abandoned your birthright, Brother?”

Steve dodged the caress, stepping out of her reach. “Some birthright,” he sneered. “The right to lose my life for you, or maybe rot in prison. Who are you?”

She gazed at him sorrowfully. “You have so much potential, Brother. You would really rather waste your days playing the nursemaid to a spoiled child-queen?”

“Why are you here?” he demanded, instead of answering her question. Because there was always reason – the Dark Brotherhood didn’t show up anywhere just to make polite conversation and catch up with old friends, especially since they hadn’t sent someone Steve would recognize out of guild armor.

Her Speaker must be an amateur, to have sent such a new Sister – her curiosity alone compromised her into taking risks that no superior would approve of, confronting him right here in this open hallway.

“The Black Hand humbly asks for an audience with you, honored Brother,” she murmured, eyes demurely lowered. He had known these people too long to think it was anything but a calculated gesture. His late father may have long lamented Steve’s lack of cleverness, but even a dumb dog knew what the sound of a drawn bow meant. “And with our dear Mother.”

Her eyes flickered up to his. Perhaps the eerie coppery glow of her gaze was meant to unsettle him, but she really didn’t understand him if that were the case. He may not look like another Dark Elf, but she was no more ‘foreign’ or ‘strange’ to him than his own Robin. And he had seen many things that frightened him more than she ever could. 

“I decline, Sister,” he said sharply. “Next?”

“I know you can hear her,” the Sister whispered, and Steve felt his throat contract, holding back the nausea just those six simple words could bring. “It’s your destiny, Serani. You were born to serve the Night Mother.”

Like the stirring of old heavy drapes in an ancient manse, Steve heard her voice for the first time in months and locked his muscles to resist the urge to turn and look for a figure who would not be there.

**_She speaks so boldly for one who knows so little, does she not?_ **

Steve stared her down, an uncharacteristically cold look frozen into his features. “You’re annoying me, which annoys her,” he said curtly, and he was the one who managed to startle her, a small flash of fear flitting over her face. “But fine – take a message back to Tina for me, then.”

The Sister had just enough time to draw back in surprise as Steve reached out – probably faster than she expected of a halfling, the silly cow – and twisted her neck with a snap that, even with his skills, echoed with incriminating finality down the hallway. The distinctive sound brought Robin rushing out from the dressing room, frantic and wide-eyed. “Steve-!”

Steve gaped as he saw her – Robin was barely dressed, still in her chemise, the garments soaked through with blood all down the front – blood in hair, even, and dripping from the once ivory hem of her shift. She had no shoes on and there was a familiar dagger in her hand.

The Blade of Woe.

Sweaty and breathless, she spotted him – and the body at his feet – and stopped dead in her tracks. Dryly, she said, “Well, I see we’ve had a nice reunion. It’s always lovely when the Brotherhood comes to visit.”

“I…see that I’ve come out better than you have,” he observed finally, past the beat of his heart in his throat that was trying so hard to strangle him. There was the dark shadow of a bruise forming over the left side of her face and the anger he feels then is a centering force that overwhelms his terror.

Coolly, she flipped the Blade of Woe over to show him the tacky smear of blood drying over the curved silver surface. “I handled it.”

“Did they really try to have you assassinated?” he asked, genuinely alarmed. “Right here, in the Blue Palace?”

Robin’s sudden and untimely death would’ve aroused his suspicions, even in the most innocent of accidents – to blatantly attempt her violent murder right in the middle of the royal seat on Coronation Day was stupidity on a level he wouldn’t have expected from Tina…unless making Steve furious was her real goal.

“I doubt it,” she admitted. “He startled me – idiot should have known better than to sneak up on me. So I stabbed him, and everything went downhill from there. What do you want to do about the bodies?”

Grimly, he said “We’re sending them back.”

Alarmed, Robin asked, “Right here? In the middle of the palace?”

“We don’t have time to ride out to somewhere secluded,” he pointed out, reaching down to scoop up the dead elf woman. “Show me the dead Brother and watch the door while I take out the trash.”

He was, to Steve’s surprise, an actual Nordman, which wasn’t very common back in High Rock – then again, it made sense. Easier to blend in that way, here in Solitude. He was also enormous, which made it even more impressive that Robin had managed to defeat him, even with the Blade of Woe.

“Eight times?” Steve asked, with brows raised and head tilting downward at the corpse. “Robin the Sharp needed eight times?”

She sniffed. “They called me _Robin the Sharp_ , not _Robin the Accurate_.”

Steve gave her the chance to throw her shift into the fireplace – the most incriminating evidence – and wove an Illusion to cover up the gigantic stain that had now become part of the carpet. Later, they would roll that up and burn it too, but there wasn’t any time for that now. A replacement could easily be found – in a palace this size, no one would think anything of a minor change of furnishings. That accomplished, Robin placed a ward spell over the door into her own room and resumed dressing again so that Steve could keep his concentration on the summoning. Even throughout pulling on her stockings, Robin could hear him speaking and peered around the divider to watch.

The room itself seemed to become darker somehow, the moment he began the incantation. Lifting his fingers in a loose hold, Steve murmured “ _Enter with thy presence, ye bloody shadow, ye longing doom_.”

Beneath Steve’s feet, the castle stones began to shift oddly, and rippled as though made of water rather than rock. Or boiling. “ _Thou art my silk strand, woven of all my despairs, wailing into night-winds_.”

The reins slid between his fingers, the leather supple after thousands of years between other hands like his, the empty bit dangling from the end – catching the light in the room with an eerie red glow upon the metal.

“ _My very depths encompass, the lightless day which art consume my very soul. I call ye, devouring shadow, from beyond your forbidden waters_.”

And when the coal black horse burst forward from beneath him, her great head materializing around the bit and bridle, Steve timed it perfectly, tightening his thighs around the lunging girth of her flanks as he pulled up on the reins to stop her from bolting forward.

Shadowmere, the daedric mare of Oblivion’s own making, had been summoned.

“I’ll never get tired of watching you do that,” Robin breathed, tucking the ends of her laces back into her bodice.

He pulled her up hard, much harsher than he would be with any mortal horse, and the mare’s eerie blood-red eyes rolled back, baring her sharpened teeth at him, though she obeyed and settled obediently in place. Smoothly, he dismounted from her black saddle, patting at her side as he looked her in the eye.

“Take these back to Tina and be about it quick, my mare,” he said, jerking his head back at the corpses.

Shadowmere stamped an impatient foot at him, silent in her supernatural way.

He rolled his eyes. “Alright, you can have a bite or two. But get the point across, won’t you? No need to return – I’ll be keeping the reins, should I have need of you again.”

And with the swish of her dull black tail, she was off again.

\---

She thought she was going to be a priestess, in the beginning.

Just half a day’s ride from the Imperial capital was Bravil, squatting over the stinking swamps that belonged to the strip of land between the nations of Elsweyr and Black Marsh. It was a poor and filthy city, and Robin was a poor and filthy child born to its streets.

But despite the hunger and the poverty, Robin had always been a bright and intelligent girl, hungry not just for food, but for knowledge. Her Breton blood made her gifted with magic and so, the children’s home sent her to the town’s chapel, who in Bravil was devoted to Mara, goddess of mercy and marriage and childbirth. The chapel healer was an Argonian lizard-woman called Marz, and she was impressed early on by her skills at picking up new spells, even for a Breton, and knew that Robin had no other place to make her way in the world.

Robin herself had no interest in mercy or marriage or childbirth. She liked to learn and she even enjoyed Marz’s lessons in Restoration magic, but Robin chafed under the church primate’s idea of what was ‘proper’ to learn in the world of mages. His objections were endless, even to things that were often not even daedric magic or necromancy, which even the average person would have misgivings about, but the primate had strict beliefs about what was acceptable for a priest or priestess of Mara to know. Anything he deemed improper was off limits.

Even worse than this, though, was Roland Dugot.

Roland was one of the church laymen, and the only other Breton at the Chapel of Mara. They were not a race common to the gutters in that part of the Empire. He had known Robin since she was twelve, and he began voicing the opinion that he thought of her with the potential of a future bride when she was only fourteen, though he was twice her age.

Though her mentor could not have known that Robin would not and could not ever accept a man in marriage, Marz was still dismayed that a man nearly old enough to be Robin’s father had begun expressing an interest in her at the tender age of fourteen. Too young, she said, for a mere hatchling to catch the interest of a grown male.

The primate, unfortunately, found the idea of two disciples joined in marriage to be very pleasing and thought it only proper that young Robina the Apprentice should find a husband of her own race.

It was around this time that Robin met him.

Growing up in Bravil had made Robin rather immune to the less than rosy aspects to be found in the human condition. People laying in gutters and ladies in states of undress didn’t unsettle her and it didn’t really unsettle her mentor either.

The half-blood boy did unsettle Marz, though.

She saw him first at the market, in fine silk clothes that would make a cut-purse salivate, standing next to a hard-mouthed Dark Elf man.

Robin didn’t even like boys, but she could tell that this boy was beautiful, though his dark eyes were very strange – liquid and soft and difficult to look at, she hadn’t understood what made him so different-looking from herself at first. Marz steered them over to the fishmonger on the opposite side of the market stalls immediately after spotting them, though Robin hadn’t realized it at the time.

The second time she saw him, he and the Dark Elf man were standing near to the Lucky Lady statue in the town center as twilight came on, and she spoke with him for a few brief moments – the boy said that his name was Steve and showed her a light spell, and when Marz marched her back to the Chapel of Mara, she said “You must stay clear of the boy, my hatchling. Halflings only bring trouble – always to themselves, and usually to others as well.”

“Halflings?” she repeated, puzzled. “Aren’t I a halfling too then, Marz? Steve is a Breton. Like me.”

“He may be a Breton, but he is nothing like you,” the priestess said shortly. “That Elf man was the boy’s father, little one. He only looks like a Breton on the _outside_.”

Marz should have known that igniting Robin’s curiosity in such a way was a mistake. The races of Man in Tamriel interbred with some regularity, but she had never met a child of both Man and Mer before speaking with Steve.

They were, she soon discovered, not well liked. Marz had said that halflings bring trouble upon themselves and others, but it seemed to her that it was others who brought trouble upon them. To Beastfolk, the other races often looked much the same, but in the sight of Mer and Man, Steve got double-takes and sometimes – especially for the Nords or the High Elves, looks of sheer disgust, like he’d done something obscene right in the middle of the street. Though she also noticed that most of the disgust vanished when his grim Dark Elf father was around, like they didn’t quite dare to disrespect him.

Steve did not seem surprised that Robin would only speak to him in secret, seemed amused by it, even. And the more she spoke to him, the more Robin liked him. Her new friend could walk as silently as a shadow, he could never seem to remember the plots of the book and plays he consumed and his father was never without a scowl. But more importantly, he knew more about magic than she did, and there was nothing he thought was too ‘improper’ for a priestess to know.

At times, Steve seemed more like an Illusion, a mirage created by Robin’s own loneliness and her terror and uncertainty of the future. A companion to love and console her. Only that conversation with Marz assured her that he was very real. That, and the other people of Bravil.

It was after months of speaking to Steve that Robin turned fifteen and her worst fears began coming to a head all at once.

Roland Dugot became more and more eager to convince Mara’s primate that it was in Robin’s best interest to become his wife – never mind the silly girl’s bleating objections on the matter. It was just at the end of the Feast of Saint Alessia Festival that the situation reached its inevitable end.

Roland, several cups deep in the ale, caught her by surprise near the empty Undercroft entrance and attempted to take the liberties of a husband without a marriage or the consent of the lady in question.

And Robin, panicked and frightened nearly out of her wits, spoke aloud the first spell that came to mind – a word of Telekinesis that was used to move objects. Except that Robin shrieked it with all her might, lifting Roland off his feet and slamming his head into the low ceiling of the stone entryway. He died instantly, and she fled into the night.

Since Roland stank of ale and had an obvious lump on the head, the chapel staff shrugged their shoulders and decided that Roland had clearly over-indulged and fell down the Undercroft steps. An unfortunate, but not suspicious, event.

And Robin believed that no one knew what she’d done. Until she went to bed that night and found Steve there, after throwing off an invisibility spell.

His eyes were like his smile, soft and dark and full of mysteries. “I know what you did to Roland Dugot.”

And she was never seen in Bravil again.

From that day on, Robina the Apprentice disappeared and Robin the Sharp took her place.

Later, there came other things.

Stealing the title of a destitute gambler and his even more destitute estate, giving her a new name again: Lady Robin Buckley.

The death of Steve’s father, Varani, after which the Black Hand insisted that Steve must be the new Listener, the new leader of the Brotherhood, who heard the words of the Night Mother and worked her will.

Fleeing with him, Shadowmere, and the old woman herself in hand when Steve confessed that the idea of living in his father’s shadow with blood on his hands for the rest of his life made him sick to his stomach.

Turning themselves into thieves, rather than murderers, even if that inclination to strike first…never quite left them.

Being hired by a grizzled war veteran the size of a mountain to steal his most precious possession from a psychotic mage holed up in an Ayleid ruin with delusions of grandeur and godhood.

Realizing that the little girl they were hired to pluck from her captor was more – so, _so much_ more than a mere child.

Concocting a plan to place that child in the eyes of the world, in the center of a country torn apart by war in the hopes that the gaze of her people would keep her safe when they could not.

Riding like Hircine himself through the wild forests and crawling through Nord catacombs – all to find the crown that could name her heir.

Bringing an already crippled government down to its knees in a single day, the Moot practically held hostage to make that crown hers.

And now, here they were.

“All set?” Hopper asked his three wayward children quietly as a pair of footmen prepared to open the front doors of the palace. Even there, the noise from the crowds watching and waiting to see the journey of their young queen to her place of coronation was tremendously loud.

He did also note that the oldest pair seemed even more tense now and wondered if they were still so unsettled by what happened this morning. They both gave him tight smiles.

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Steve answered as he and Robin picked up the absolutely monstrous length of El’s train.

Robin was silently thoughtful and El, after a moment of pause, straightened up her back and shoulders and gazed out into the bright winter sunlight as the doors were opened at last.

“Everything shall be alright,” she said firmly.

Uneasily, Steve glanced at Robin. He could never be certain whether Eleven knew who they really were or not or if it was just something her sight had not seen fit to show her. Everything had already gone wrong today and he could tell by the tightness around Robin’s eyes that her thoughts echoed his.

Was this why she had insisted on the mithril dress? Did she believe that the three of them were unequal to the task of protecting her life?

Softly, Robin uttered a string of spells – a long line of Restoration magic that was meant to suppress El’s divine energies, temporarily. It would hopefully keep her from falling into madness and uttering her prophecies aloud for all of her new subjects to hear.

Would Tina attempt to assassinate their charge for Steve and Robin’s continued disobedience?

There was a sea of fur cloaks and fair faces awaiting them. Hopper took El’s arm and the pair of them carried her train for her as the queen descended the steps downward.

Though he felt the tenseness of each step, all went smoothly, even once standing in the main courtyard of Castle Dour. Neither of them could bring themselves to relax, despite El’s poise and queenly ease as she was presented before the crowd. The placements of the walkways and ramparts was a Brother or Sister’s dream and every moment they stood there was a moment that an assassin with any basic competence to them could fire off an arrow or a spell and that could be the end of someone dear to him.

Steve barely heard the droning of the old Nord priest who had been given the honors of overseeing the official crowning of Queen Elivette. He could hardly bring himself to breathe. The Brotherhood had a certain flair for the dramatic – killing Eleven at the exact moment the Crown of Freydis was placed upon her head was _exactly_ to their taste.

But the moment came, and Hopper lifted the crown, an ancient and beautiful thing made of silver and crystal, formed together to look like leaves. The pair of them had a strong suspicion that the object had originally been crafted by elves, but both of them were equally certain that it would be a mistake to mention that to any of the Nordic population.

Though Steve held his breath through the whole thing, there was no sniper’s shot waiting when Hopper placed the Crown of Freydis upon her head.

The crystal leaves emitted a gentle blue glow round El’s head, as if they approved of their current resting place, and the whole crowd watching gasped – some in shock, some in wondrous awe, and some in genuine horror.

“Skyrim, I have brought your new ruler, as Freydis herself has blessed,” Hopper roared, taking one small, gloved hand in his own. “High Queen Elivette!”

As stunned and horrified as the nobility were with this, and as truly discomforted as the visiting dignities were, the commoners watching began to clap and cheer, and they could hardly do anything else.

And Eleven smiled serenely at the diplomats from the far corners of the Empire, the pompous local nobleman of court, and the disquieted jarls. She waved her gloved hand at the crowds that cheered for her, elegant as any noble-born lady, the weight of her enormous gown lightened by her Feather charms, and even her ne'er-do-well watchers felt choked up at the sight of her.

They had stolen her, shaved and half-dressed in an ancient pit, hardly able to speak her own name, except that she somehow knew Master-level spells.

Now she was a queen.

Then the crowds began to disperse, and Steve realized that the moment he was fearing seemed to have passed – until the Kingkiller himself, Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak, approached their little queen.

To his own surprise, he had barely opened his mouth to speak when Billy Hare-Groves, that delicious and _very_ testy captain of the palace guard, pointed his ebony blade at Ulfric’s neck. “You must think me some kind of fool,” he snarled, baring his teeth at the jarl with no regard for his title. Delicious, indeed. “State your purpose and away with you, Stormcloak.”

It was such a lucky thing that annoyance only made him look more rough and handsome, because the man seemed annoyed all the time.

Ulfric, to their surprise, stared straight at El, who gazed back at him unflinchingly. “I, Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm,” he growled, “Today, I challenge the High Queen to single combat.”

Several of the Jarls and nobility looked pleasantly surprised by this.

El’s steward, the nice By-Eyries woman, looked furious and disgusted. “You are not serious!” she demanded. In a low, furious hiss, she said “Do you honestly intend to slaughter an innocent child in front of her father? Not to speak of the hundreds of people surrounding us! Do you believe murdering a little girl in the capital shall win you any favor?”

Ulfric spared Hopper a flinty glance. “The Sea-Hopper believes that there should be witnesses to my challenge – so witnesses we shall have. Does the High Queen forfeit her claim to the throne or do you answer my challenge?”

The question was clearly intended for Hopper and not Eleven, but it was still the little girl who looked straight at him and nodded her young head, the crystal crown still apart her braided hair.

“El,” Robin whispered, only loud enough for her to hear. “Are you sure?”

El turned her head, only enough to whisper into Robin’s ear. “Cut me out of this.”

 _Ah_ , she realized. _This was why she wanted to wear the mithril gown_.


End file.
